


what we've got here

by psikeval



Category: N.Flying (Band)
Genre: Angst, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 03:28:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14464008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: It seems to Seunghyub that if you fall in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same way, and are lucky enough to be invited into their bed (and stupid or self-destructive enough to agree), you should probably stay quiet about what exactly led you there.





	what we've got here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [super](https://archiveofourown.org/users/super/gifts).



> a very happy birthday to robin, who dragged me into this hell and has brought me nothing but joy (and pain) ever since <3

 

There’s a knock on Seunghyub’s door around 10 PM on a Friday, and that’s how it begins.

After a brief assessment of his bedroom (disastrous, but normal) and current evening activities (Overwatch and onion chips, still wearing pants), Seunghyub decides to answer. “Yeah?”

“Hi, hyung,” says Hweseung, shuffling a few steps inside. His hair looks wet, and his face is very pink, like he just took a nice hot shower and had to come directly Seunghyub’s bedroom afterwards looking painfully kissable because _life is not fair_ and that’s all there is to it.

“Hey.” Seunghyub very calmly crams his mouth with an entire stack of chips and focuses on the screen again. Who was he going to switch to? What round is this? Why _three_ snipers? These are the questions he should really be concerned about.

“I was just, um. I’m looking for the hard drive?”

Ah. With some difficulty, Seunghyub swallows his mouthful of chips. “Hun and Jaehyun are watching a movie in Hyunnie’s room. Spiderman, I think.” In an effort to make casual and relatable conversation, he’d told Hun that he saw the one where Peter first got his powers, but Hun just looked at him pityingly and said _that’s like saying ‘the one where Batman’s parents die_.’ Which is why there’s no point talking to kids these days, and Seunghyub ended up back here on the mountain of laundry now tall enough to serve as a recliner, eating potato chips and playing some truly disheartening quickplay rounds in solo queue.

But—anyway, back to Hweseung, who is standing slightly bent at the waist in the cramped entrance of Seunghyub’s room, looking frustrated and flushed and so pretty that Seunghyub’s jaw aches a little. He isn’t saying anything, so Seunghyub says, “Do you want to sit down? It’s not TV, but. You could stay and watch if you want.”

Hweseung takes a deep and slightly wavering breath. “Yeah. Sure. Kwangjin’s…”

“Going back and forth between your room and the bathroom sink as he completes all seven hundred steps of his skincare routine?”

It gets a short, huffing laugh out of Hweseung as he drops down onto the clothes pile once known as Seunghyub’s bed, scrubbing a hand through his thick damp hair. “Yep.”

“If it’s keeping you awake, you could sleep here,” Seunghyub offers, because by some miracle he’s managed to desensitize himself to the sight of soft, sleep-rumpled Hweseung snoring quietly into a pillow. It was a feat, but he did it, and now can reap the warm cuddly benefits.

“N-no! That’s fine,” Hweseung says immediately. His face seems to be getting redder. “I mean I’m not—um. I just. I could use the distraction, I think. This is good. If that’s okay.”

“Sure, yeah. Oh, fuck yourself, Hanzo, we could all use some healing.”

Another breathy, self-conscious laugh. Not that it doesn’t sound nice, but Hweseung isn’t quite himself tonight. “This is, um. The game Jaehyun-hyung and Hun-hyung like to play, right?”

“Yeah, but Jaehyun’s actually good. I could use his Reaper right now.”

“What are you? Or… who are you?” Hweseung asks uncertainly. The furrow in his brow is audible, and adorable. “Are those your…arms?”

Seunghyub hits the dance emote and spins the camera so Hweseung can get a better look at D.Va while her mech claps and spins. Somewhere in the distance, their dead Widowmaker is spamming ‘ _thanks! thanks! thanks!_ ’ at everyone; Seunghyub truly could not care less.

“Oh, it’s a cat!” This earns tonight’s first real smile from Hweseung. “That’s cute.”

For a while they sit in relative quiet, as Hweseung rests his arms on his knees and his chin on his arms and Seunghyub’s team fails rather spectacularly to organize a coordinated push.

“Fuck,” Seunghyub mutters when he tries, and just as quickly fails, to rocket-boost past the choke point. The Symmetra on the other team put sentry turrets fucking everywhere, because of course they did, and Seunghyub is summarily stripped of his mech and punched to death by an oversealous Doomfist. While the game replays his virtual demise, he sighs and starts sucking crumbs and onion dust from each of his fingers, because using the controller with chip-hands always feels kind of gross. He’s messy, but he’s not a monster.

“Hngh,” Hweseung says, strangled and soft as a whisper.

As sounds go, it is not an ambiguous one. It is, in fact, the sort of noise that goes directly to Seunghyub’s dick without any input from his brain, and only when he’s un-casually hunched over the beginnings of an incredibly inconvenient erection does Seunghyub realize he is, in fact, mirroring Hweseung’s posture exactly, that Hweseung is biting at his lips and his eyes are glassy and he looks fucking _miserable_ and _oh_ , shit, shit, _shit_.

Distraction. Hweseung said he needed a distraction.

Which is fine. It’s fine. This entire dorm building is a cheaply-painted residence hall for young and frequently horny guys, and honestly—nobody cares about your boner. Seunghyub has brushed his teeth while Hun jacked off in the shower, and mostly he spent those few minutes thinking about whether he should floss more (probably) and where he stood on the of etiquette of shared-shower masturbation (apathetic, for the most part).

Hun is also really quiet when he comes. It’s overall a very unobjectionable shared-bathroom experience, and no more a big deal than Kwangjin painstakingly trimming his toenails over the garbage can. They live with and around each other. They all make do.

So this doesn’t have to be, like, a thing. Nobody has to get weird, because it _isn’t_ weird, it’s normal and natural and they can just sit here and watch Seunghyub’s miserable D.Va skills until they achieve a decompressed, chill, boner-free zone. That is 100% possible.

One hundred fucking percent. Seunghyub tries to breathe deeply and focus on nothing but the fact that he has tiny missiles now, and should probably remember to use them.

Two more matches pass this way, in oppressive, sound-effects-punctuated silence, and while Seunghyub is barely aware of having participated, he nonetheless congratulates himself for keeping his eyes almost completely on the screen. Because that is _almost_ the same as not thinking about Hweseung’s dick. Gold for objective time. Who says he can’t multitask?

It’s just that…every so often Hweseung will shift awkwardly, or fidget with his clothes, pulling seams this way and that, or press his thighs more closely together, hunched over his lap, and. Well, Seunghyub isn’t blind and he sure as hell isn’t deaf and when Hweseung makes a barely-audible whimpering noise and bites at his own hand while watching Seunghyub’s fingers move on the controller, it’s impossible to keep pretending that none of this is happening.

“Hweseungie,” he says, half warning, half plea, and looks over at Hweseung properly.

His soft round cheeks are flushed red and his lips are parted, eyes wide with an ‘ _oh, shit_ ’ kind of panic that makes Seunghyub feel guilty as hell.

“Sorry, hyung,” Hweseung whispers, blushing worse with humiliation, wiping sweat from his face with one rough swipe of his sleeve. “I didn’t… I just—”

The thing is, Seunghyub knows, or at least can guess. That Hweseung’s probably been on edge for way too long and hasn’t taken care of it; that he probably got worked up in the shower and went looking for the library of decidedly non-TV content on the hard drive; and now he’s sitting in Seunghyub’s room, sweaty, jittery with nerves and arousal, turned on by just about everything and unable to calm himself down no matter how hard he tries.

“I could help,” Seunghyub hears himself say, like he’s having a fucking out-of-body experience while trying not to look at anything but Hweseung’s face, which — is not impossible, honestly, under these circumstances, but also, _what?_

“What?” Hweseung’s eyes are so wide and he is so very, very still.

There is a horrible, excruciating moment in which Seunghyub’s brain has to catch up with what, exactly, he’s just offered, and the extremely low likelihood of being able to take it back. “I mean,” he says, weakly, and then, unfortunately, he looks down.

Because Hweseung’s body has uncurled slightly, slack with shock, and thick shape of his erection is so painfully obvious in his favorite yellow sweatpants, because— _because,_ and oh god Seunghyub’s mouth is hanging open but the fabric between Hweseung’s legs is wet and dark and clinging to his cock, like he’s been sitting here for twenty minutes so desperate he’s fucking soaked in precome. Like he isn’t wearing a damn thing underneath.

“I could help,” Seunghyub says again in a helpless rush. “Please, let me help.”

For a second, Hweseung’s face crumples, agonized, and _god_ it was so stupid to offer, stupid and so fucking inappropriate. Of course the answer is no, he had no business asking, and now has no business letting the question stand, but Seunghyub’s throat feels tight and closed up, frozen so completely it’s difficult to breathe. There’s nothing to do but wait while Hweseung buries his face in shaky hands and rubs hard at his cheeks.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Seunghyub echoes, unable to believe it. “I— I can—?”

“Help,” Hweseung says, nodding violently, but his voice cracks and it sounds more like a plea than agreement. Desperate. He needs this so much.

Seunghyub barely even tries to fling the controller towards the TV before launching himself across the cramped little room, fitting himself around every bit of Hweseung he can touch, enveloping the soft warm bundle of his body from behind, wriggling closer. Everything about Hweseung smells so fucking good. He bites at Hweseung’s neck and Hweseung moans like he’s being fucked, like he’s halfway there already and just needs more. “Can I touch you?”

“Please— please, hyung—” Being called that has _never_ been a turn-on for Seunghyub, but right now it feels as if his lungs are on fire. He wants Hweseung to say it again, and then maybe say it once more while crying, the way his voice always gets thick with tears—he grabs Hweseung’s hips more tightly than he should and tries not to feel like a goddamn monster.

“All right, I’ve got you. It’s okay, baby. That’s it.”

Just from Seunghyub slipping his hands lower, hooking his thumb in the waistband of Hweseung’s sweatpants—just from pulling the elastic away from overheated pink skin, gently freeing his dick and pushing the pants down around his thighs, Hweseung whines all quiet and trembly and _fuck_ , he’s so messy it would almost look like he’d already come in his pants if he weren’t so painfully stiff. There’s precome dripping down the length of his cock, trickling in shiny rivulets onto his balls and the insides of his thighs, and even as Seunghyub watches Hweseung bites his lip and squirms and his cock leaks even more. Hweseung works his hips in short, jerky motions into the empty air, eyes shut tight.

Seunghyub slips one wide-spread hand up Hweseung’s belly, just to feel the soft hot skin and fine hairs under his palm. Just for something, anything, to distract him for a second.

“Fuck,” he breathes out, shaken. “You’re so wet, Hweseungie.”

Hweseung flinches, ducks enough to hide his face, and Seunghyub fucking hates it.

“No no no,” he says, _begging_ , and wraps his other hand around the achingly hard, sticky-wet length of Hweseung’s erection, savoring he low, helpless moan it elicits from Hweseung, how his hips roll forward in little slow, needy thrusts when Seunghyub thumbs back and forth over the swollen, leaking head of his cock. “No, Seung-ah, it’s beautiful, okay, you look so fucking sexy like this, I love it. I love how wet you are for me,” he murmurs, kissing Hweseung’s ear and his jaw and his throat; the breath shudders out of Hweseung all at once and he is clinging to Seunghyub, hips working back and forth until Seunghyub’s palm is all but dripping precome, the slickness spreading down his fingers and wrists.

This is, without a doubt, the hottest thing Seunghyub has ever fucking seen. He wants to lick his hand clean, nuzzle between Hweseung’s thighs and suck his cock so badly that it aches, but is fairly damn certain he can’t. Surely there’s a line here, one that Seunghyub shouldn’t cross. Hweseung said he could help. He did _not_ say ‘and in doing so, please indulge all the weird kinks you’ve accumulated over the past five months of being head-over-heels in love with me,’ which feels relevant because Seunghyub does not want to give a blowjob so much as he wants to ascend to a pure state of ecstasy with Hweseung slowly, endlessly fucking his throat.

(A willingness to die, here and now, so long as he goes with Hweseung’s dick in his mouth, does not seem quite in the spirit of bros helping bros.)

“Hweseungie,” he says with his lips pressed right up against Hweseung’s ear. This close, he can slowly, firmly stroke Hweseung’s cock and hear every single sound it coaxes out of those thick sexy lips. Mostly, it’s gasping with these tiny, throaty little whimpers, growing louder and more rhythmic as Seunghyub jerks him off. “This should take the edge off, right? And afterwards I could spread you open and fuck you. Would you like that?”

“Oh god— _seu— Seunghyub-hyung_.” Hweseung wails, clutching at Seunghyub’s shoulders, and comes in messy spurts over Seunghyub’s hands. His eyes are scrunched shut and his whole body shakes while Seunghyub holds him close and pets Hweseung’s sides and hips with sticky palms and grasping fingers, making a mess of his soft yellow clothes. Seunghyub can’t help it. He can’t stop touching Hweseung and he can’t seem to fucking stop trembling.

It’s just. He didn’t expect Hweseung to say his name, like that, when. When he… It was _loud_ , maybe loud enough for the others to hear, and that shouldn’t make Seunghyub’s chest feel full to bursting like Hweseung is his, like he claimed something. That isn’t what this is.

“Can I keep touching you,” he asks quietly, and when Hweseung nods immediately, fervently, Seunghyub tips him gently back onto the clothes-strewn mess of the bed.

After asking ‘ _May I?’_ again, just to be certain, he takes off Hweseung’s pants, sliding them down and then running his hands up the bare skin, feet ankles calves the backs of his knees and thighs and Seunghyub feels drunk with it. Overwhelmed, to be allowed so much. In the wake of having finally come, Hweseung is quiet and sated and almost sleepy, humming these painfully fucking sexy little sounds whenever Seunghyub kisses his skin.

Hweseung’s whole body feels fever-hot beneath his hands (beneath his mouth, when Seunghyub kisses the inside of his knee, his hip, the soft skin of his belly) and it takes a little longer than it maybe should, for Seunghyub to focus. “Is there anything you want?”

“Finger me?” Hweseung blushes, peering at Seunghyub through his lashes, but doesn’t back down. He just. Lays there, hands clenched around the blankets, waiting. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

It takes a minute for Seunghyub to remember how to breathe in. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I— I just. I like it.”

There’s a second where Seunghyub feels dizzy, he’s so turned on. But having Hweseung spread out half-naked on his bed like this—it makes the thought of stopping to touch himself seem both stupid and unimportant. So instead he goes fumbling through his bedside table for lube, which he knows is here somewhere, underneath bits of mail from home and wrappers that somehow could not make it to the trashcan that sits within arms reach — ah, here it is.

It’s a bottle that arrived because he bought sex stuff on the internet while terrified that Jaehyun would appear and look over his shoulder, meaning things got placed in his cart without fine print being read very closely, which led to Seunghyub accidentally owning mint-flavored lube and also a dildo that he has not, to date, ever managed to fit inside himself, but which lives in his bedside table as a sort of benchmark of his future aspirations.

(Seunghyub is going to actually read the measurements next time, if the chagrin of being _inept at buying sex toys on the internet_ ever fades. Which feels like a pretty big ‘if.’)

Anyway, he retrieves the lube and swiftly shuts the drawer, both to forestall any discussion of the giant blue silicone dick inside _and_ to get right back to touching Hweseung. The gel is cool and slippery on his fingertips, and maybe he’s got too much, but some of it smears on Hweseung’s skin as Seunghyub fumbles between his legs.

When the first ungainly glob of lube is pressed against his asshole, Hweseung’s whole body jolts. “ _Cold_ , hyung,” he hisses, voice wavering as Seunghyub rubs back and forth, barely teasing the tight rim of his hole, making everything slippery and wet.

“Sorry. I can…”

“No.” Hweseung gropes blindly and grabs his wrist. “No, never mind.”

“Yeah? Keep going?” Seunghyub’s voice sounds odd in his own ears, deep and throaty and utterly wrecked; Hweseung, with a quiet and pitiful groan, whispers _yes._

After a single moment to catch his breath, he starts to press inside and Hweseung immediately cries out, arching his back, then covers his face with his arms, muffling the sounds in yellow folds of sweatshirt. Every motion of Seunghyub’s fingers, no matter how easy or slow, earns the same kind of whimpers and moans and writhing of his hips. Because apparently Hweseung is just that sensitive. It’s _overwhelming_ , how much Seunghyub wants to fuck him.

“Oh my god, hyung,” Hweseung groans into his sleeves when Seunghyub starts to fuck in and out of his ass with two fingers, as deep as they’ll go. “Your _hands_.”

Despite himself, despite everything, Seunghyub feels his heart skip, pleased. “You like them?”

“I’ll never be able to look at them again! I’m ruined now, I— oh _god_ that’s, wait wait stop—”

“Sorry!” Seunghyub is frozen in place, unsure what he’s done and scared to move in any direction until he knows exactly what Hweseung wants. “What is it, did I hurt you?”

“No. No, just…move your fingers back? And press… a little harder. There. I want to see—”

They both see, very quickly, when Hweseung’s whole body clenches and a high-pitched keening cry is wrung from his throat. It sounds a lot like pain. Or it would, if his dick wasn’t twitching and sluggishly dripping come, like some sort of encore to the orgasm itself, thighs tensed and quivering. Seunghyub feels a little shaken and incredibly fucking turned on.

“Hweseungie,” he murmurs, and watches Hweseung shiver. “Too much?”

“A little, but.” He peeks out from under his arms. “Don’t stop. What you were doing before, I mean.”

That is more doable, Seunghyub thinks, and less frightening. He withdraws a little and, while carefully avoiding that particular spot, teases inside Hweseung with gentle strokes and spreads him wider, adding extra dabs of lube as he goes. They both seem to like it messy.

“Fun fact,” Seunghyub announces, and nearly bursts into half-hysterical laughter because he is a moron but a _moron that Hweseung is having sex with_. Incredible. “This is mint flavored.”

He knows without seeing it that Hweseung is frowning in confusion. “What, like toothpaste?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? I haven’t tasted it yet.”

It takes a second, but Hweseung gets it, lurching up on his elbows to stare. “You— you mean…”

Seunghyub’s heart keeps pounding, erratic, in the most alarming way. “If you’ll let me.”

“Yeah?” Hweseung’s thighs press and slide together, like he’s already anticipating it, and Seunghyub barely bites back an anguished moan. Nobody should be this hot without trying. Nobody. Below him, Hweseung licks his lips and hesitantly spreads his knees again, baring his soft slowly thickening cock and below it Seunghyub’s fingers still inside him. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Can I turn you over?”

“Yes,” Hweseung answers immediately, already moving. He drags Seunghyub’s pillow over and buries his face in it with very obvious relief. “Yep. Good, this is good.”

Seunghyub tries not to sulk, with very little success. “Did you just want to hide your face?”

“I. Maybe?” His muffled voice is climbing in pitch. “Does it matter? I’m fine, go ahead.”

“Are you sure this is okay?”

“ _Yes_.”

Despite this position being exactly what Seunghyub requested, he huffs a little and frowns at the back of Hweseung’s head, at all the thick hopelessly tousled hair in disarray. But it’s hard to stay displeased, or even pretend, when he looks down and sees the pretty curves of Hweseung’s bare ass and the backs of his thighs. In fact he kind of ends up smiling like an idiot, so maybe it’s best that they’re not looking at each other. It’s just. He likes Hweseung’s butt. It’s cute.

Seunghyub drops down and very lightly bites just beneath it, for how Hweseung yelps and jolts a little and then slowly, deliberately, moves right back. Waiting for more, his breath hard and harsh against the pillow that he’s clutching tight with both hands.

Because he is nothing if not eager to please, Seunghyub nuzzles his thighs apart, gently nipping once for the tiny, breathy sounds Hweseung makes as he squirms. He gets distracted, then, kissing and licking at all that bare skin, because Hweseung’s thighs are damp with sweat and precome and furthermore, Hweseung’s thighs are so _soft_ , soft like his ass and belly and cheeks are soft, and Seunghyub wants to kiss him fucking _everywhere_.

He spreads him with both hands and licks and Hweseung is making this keening sound, stammering out pieces of Seunghyub’s name, fractured syllables that never add up to anything but sound like begging all the same. It’s hard to focus or know what to do when Seunghyub wants everything, wants to grip Hweseung’s hips and tongue him open until Hweseung _cries_ , to fuck into Hweseung with his fingers, to see Hweseung spread on his cock, trembling and full. He wants to hear the sounds Hweseung makes when he comes, over and over and over again.

And then he— he can’t _help_ it, god, he absolutely can’t, Seunghyub ducks his head back down and runs his tongue in a wet, sloppy line from the sensitive skin behind Hweseung’s balls to the flushed, slick, stretched-open mess of his asshole, licking in slow, teasing flicks around the rim until Hweseung fucking _sobs_. He pushes helplessly back against Seunghyub’s mouth and just—takes it, whimpers and shakes and jerks his hips at every filthy wet sound of Seunghyub’s tongue fucking in and out of him.

It’s exactly the right amount of too much, and Seunghyub isn’t even sure when he starts grinding his hips against the bed—or the laundry, or whatever the fuck is beneath him, he doesn’t _care_ , just needs the too-rough friction against his cock to take the edge off. To keep him from blacking out the next time Hweseung catches his breath to whine _please, hyung_ into Seunghyub’s pillow.

_This boy_. Seunghyub pulls back and for a second he’s just—panting raggedly, spreading Hweseung’s ass with his hands and softly kneading, watching the muscles flex involuntarily, helplessly rubbing his aching dick against what is, in fact, a rather nice sweater. Soft. He should say something, right? He meant to. To clarify. God, it’s hard to remember any words. “I was just talking, before, when I—I mean of course I’d like to, but we don’t— it’s not—whatever you want, okay?” he says, nearly pleading. He needs to be clear on this. “Anything.”

“Okay,” Hweseung says hesitantly, his cloth-muffled voice breaking, the pitch gone closer to a miserable squeak. “But I think if, um. If you don’t fuck me, I might actually cry.”

“You—you want it that bad?” Sehunghyub blurts without thinking.

“Don’t…”

Hweseung’s voice is small and hurt and humiliated, shrinking away, because Seunghyub is an asshole who ruins things and ruins moments and ultimately deserves to be alone.

“No, please, I’m sorry, Hweseungie, forgive me, I keep messing up. I didn’t mean it like that, I wouldn’t.” He moves carefully up Hweseung’s body, nuzzling his forehead against Hweseung’s spine, between the shoulderblades. “Hey. If there’s anybody desperate here, it’s me.”

A soft, heartbreakingly derisive snort. “All you’ve done is take care of me, you haven’t even…”

“No, but I want to.” He rocks against Hweseung’s ass, breath hitching helplessly, the crotch of his sweatpants clinging and sticky with precome and only getting worse the harder he grinds against Hweseung. It should be gross. Seunghyub shouldn’t be shaking and biting his tongue, ready to _scream_ all of a sudden with how badly he’s wanted to come for so long.

“Okay. Okay. Please—”

“Shhh,” he murmurs, nuzzling at Hweseung’s jaw and roughly yanking his pants down one-handed, fumbling for the condom, rolling it on with the clumsiest shaking hands. “Shh, baby, I’ve got you.”

Again, and even more intensely, Seunghyub is struck by the feeling of not quite inhabiting his body, even as he uses his fingers to spread Hweseung open, heart in his throat. God, how can he be this anxious and terrified _now_ , after everything they’ve already done? It’s nonsense.

“Oh,” Hweseung breathes when the thick ridged head of Seunghyub’s cock pushes inside and slowly deeper. The more he takes, the harder Hweseung’s body trembles, until he’s stuffed full, shifting to relieve the ache and whining softly with every breath. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, _oh_.”

“Hweseung, _please_.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it’s just, oh _god_ , it’s so much, I— I can’t—”

That sentiment, in fairness, is intensely relatable. Seunghyub pulls back and fucks into Hweseung again, rolling his hips hard against Hweseung’s ass. “You’re so loud.”

“I—I’m sorry—” He writhes and cries out even louder than before.

“Don’t be. You’re doing so well. I just want to give you what you want, Hweseungie. Whatever you want.”

It’s completely true, but still feels a bit like a lie. Passing this off as—what, generosity?—when Seunghyub is still unsteady, eyes burning, every breath harsh and too deep in his lungs, and mildly afraid that he will still somehow wake up from this. That none of this can possibly be real.

“Are you gonna come again?”

“Yes,” Hweseung whispers, so immediately it can only mean one thing. “Yeah—”

“You’re close?”

“Yes.

“Oh thank god,” Seunghyub says in a rush, staring desperately at a sad and crumpled-up sock and feeling, tragically, not the slightest bit further from the edge. It’s just. God, the space between them is so hot that sweat is dripping down his hips, making it somehow even wetter each time they smack against Hweseung’s ass. This is fucking pornographic, the breathy little whines Hweseung keeps making, pushing back onto Seunghyub’s dick. “I can’t—yeah, there is no way I can last much longer, fuck, you’re—please, baby, please, come on—”

He very nearly does scream, when Hweseung comes a second time, jerking and shouting into the pillow, clenching around his cock, and Seunghyub is—he’s barely aware of _when_ he comes, when it actually happens. He feels like he might fucking _faint_ , it’s so good, the white-hot pleasure searing through his bones while he fucks Hweseung through it, hard and steady. How long it lasts, when exactly Seunghyub’s dragged over the edge, and how much time he loses before remembering that sometime, maybe, they should stop…he only knows that when it’s over, finally, he’s breathing hard against Hweseung’s neck, both of them soaked with sweat.

Seunghyub feels dazed and boneless as he pulls out and flops down on his back, lightheaded enough to be dizzy—Hweseung turns on his side, watching with glazed eyes, which doesn’t make him any less completely overwhelmed. He’s actually shaking, a little bit. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Hweseung repeats, smiling so wide Seunghyub’s chest hurts. “Okay.”

For a second Seunghyub tries not to ask, but there’s no stopping it. “Can I kiss you?”

“What,” Hweseung laughs at him, eyes crinkled up in that adorable way, his cheeks suddenly twice as kissable. None of it’s the slightest bit fair. “Why couldn’t you?”

Because he can’t seem to stop touching Hweseung, no matter how hard he tries, Seunghyub combs back his thick mess of hair with one hand, carefully noting how Hweseung’s eyes go half-lidded when Seunghyub’s fingernails scrape across his scalp. He _likes_ that. Seunghyub is touching him, again, and Hweseung likes it. Amazing.

“I just,” he tries, then bites his lip and starts over. “It’s just that I want you to be comfortable, okay? I don’t know what’s too much. And you didn’t say anything about… more. Did you?”

Hweseung’s eyes get wider again, his mouth hanging slightly open—he turns and pulls a loose sheet around him, like a pinstriped white cocoon. “Oh. No, I guess I didn’t.”

There’s no reason, _no reason at all,_ to feel stung by someone confirming a simple fact, one you already knew. It’s almost as stupid as still hoping, in the absence of any reason to—but Seunghyub is versatile. He can do both. “Did you want more than just…this?”

Awful, total silence. Hweseung draws the sheet a little closer to his chin. “Um.”

“Sorry. You don’t have to answer that. We could do this again. Sometime. As much as you want,” he admits, and quickly tries to backtrack, though it feels like trying to walk a tightrope while drunk. “It doesn’t have to be official, right? I only want to make you feel that good again.”

Maybe it’s not coming out right. It’s hard to know when Seunghyub’s head feels scrambled and he can’t keep his eyes open, even for this. Completely without permission, and with no regard for the extremely important conversation taking place, his body is slipping deeper and deeper into sleep. He halfheartedly bunches up a sweater for a pillow, and it feels like a genuine accomplishment while his arms are so very heavy. “Think about it?”

The last thing he hears is Hweseung saying softly, “Yeah. I will.”

 

\--

 

It’s dark when Seunghyub wakes up cold and disoriented, unsure what roused him from sleep or why the bed feels so very empty. Then he sees Hweseung standing over him, half-outlined in the blackness by moonlight, or streetlamps, or both, through the curtains. The effect is strangely ethereal, as if it’s only a dream of Hweseung, shadows in the shape of a boy that Seunghyub loves so terribly.

But in Seunghyub’s dreams, Hweseung is not leaving, and that is clearly what he intends to do now. He’s pulling on one of the old frayed hoodies that litter the floor and okay, sure, his back is turned, but spotty as Seunghyub’s history with romance may have been, he knows the look of a person who’s on their way out the door.

“Don’t go,” he murmurs softly, stretching out on the bed until his ankles pop, arching his back just a little; Seunghyub knows he’ll be sore in the morning. So worth it.

Hweseung startles, a quick little twitch of his shoulders, and turns.

“Hyung—you’re awake.”

“Mm.” Seunghyub rubs at his face and blinks up at Hweseung; slowly his eyes are adjusting to the dark and he can see faint colors, grey-shaded lines, the lovely curve of Hweseung’s cheek, the squareness of his jaw. It would be easier to see, were Hweseung close enough to kiss. “You should come back to bed, Hweseungie. Please?”

“Why?” he asks, a gentle, cautious question that stops Seunghyub’s damn heart.

Why? _Because nothing really works without you anymore. Because you sing like you were meant for us, like you always belonged on stage with me. Like the missing part of a tune we’d been humming for years. Because that time I brought your favorite bread to the studio, I found myself thinking I would do it every day, every single day of our lives, just to see you smile._

Surely he can’t say those things. Not now, in the dark, without time to prepare; not when he can’t quite see Hweseung’s face. There’s too much chance Seunghyub would mess it up, and that confessing at all would be his first, unfixable mistake.

“You’re so warm,” he says instead, the smallest and most harmless truth he can find in the depths of his heart. Even that feels like revealing too much when his voice sounds like it does, tender and hushed with longing. It’s written on every part of him, surely, how awfully he’s pined for so long now, ever since Hweseung first smiled shyly at the four of them and said a soft _hello_ and Seunghyub was gone, gone, gone. “It’s nice. I like you here.”

“Sorry, hyung,” says Hweseung, and he does sound sorry, he sounds fucking _miserable_. “But I think… if I stayed, I think it would feel too much like something it isn’t.”

Oh.

That hurts, he notes very precisely, as if from a distance. That feels—like a chest full of static, like his lungs are stuffed full of steel wool and won’t ever breathe in again, not without pain. It’s worse, somehow, knowing that Hweseung is trying to be kind. Of course he would be, because he is the softest-hearted person Seunghyub has ever met in his life and he _always_ tries, even when his voice is heavy with something that Seunghyub supposes must be pity. Hweseung wouldn’t want to hurt him, but Hweseung wouldn’t want to lie.

It makes perfect, crushing sense, that Hweseung would turn him down just like this.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, marveling at the calm of his own voice when his mouth feels numb and useless. “Sure. I understand. Make sure you keep pushing the door until it latches properly when you leave, will you? It’s been sticking. Humidity, I guess.”

Honestly, Seunghyub doesn’t even know what he’s saying, or how it’s coming out so casual, bored even, anything less than shattered. He’s already turned his back on Hweseung, burrowing deeper under his painfully thin sheet, because he can’t—he _can’t_ , theres no way to lay here in this fucking bed that smells like them (and smells like sex, so thick it gets snarled in his lungs with a soft little hiccup of a sob) and somehow—like he’s just going to sleep after this, knowing that Hweseung doesn’t want him. After all that, when he thought…

_Fuck._

This is stupid, this is melodramatic and god he doesn’t know what else, only that everything happened so fast and he wasn’t _ready_ , childish as it sounds. He wasn’t ready for an answer to the question he always dances around with Hweseung. Not when the answer is no.

It’s painfully strange now, to think he imagined it might be anything else.

 

\--

 

For several sleepless hours, Seunghyub simply doesn’t move. While not an actual solution, it still feels considerably safer to just curl up under a sheet when the sun begins to rise, ignoring every aspect of reality. And it’s fine. Being still is almost as good as not existing and therefore being unable to fuck things up; almost like being safe. He breathes very slowly and quietly and tucks his head into his arms, and his heart beats at a normal pace. (It never actually stopped.)

Objectively, it’s ridiculous. He’s never like this. Frozen inside. This isn’t him. And he tells himself, for hours on end, that he’s going to stop feeling paralyzed by what happened any second now. It’s just that it’s hard. It takes him a while.

But as soon as Seunghyub sits up, around 7am, surrounded by the smell and the memory of fucking Hweseung in this bed, he can’t seem to stop moving, throwing sheets and clothes and his pillowcase into the farthest possible corner. It honestly defies belief, how many items in the room are tacky with sweat, lube, come, or some unholy combination of the three.

So he rounds it all up and washes it, four loads of laundry in all, and even reads the ‘line dry’ and ‘lay flat to dry’ tags, because if Seunghyub puts another designer hoodie into the dryer with socks and gym shorts he’s fairly certain an attempt will be made on his life. Then he vacuums, and then he mops for what might be the first time in ten years, and then he steals some of Hun’s nice Febreze spray because he’s _not_ going crazy, he _swears_ Hweseung’s scent is still lingering somewhere, and finally Seunghyub sits in his comically empty, sparkling-clean room on a stripped-bare mattress, which is where Jaehyun finds him early in the afternoon.

“Hey,” Seunghyub says sadly, waving a little, when Jaehyun stops dead in his tracks.

“Uhhhh,” Jaehyun says, staring wide-eyed at the vast expanses of floor, walls and furniture now revealed by Seunghyub’s demolition of the Great Laundry Mountain Range. “Damn, hyung. So what do you say we go out for a bit? Away from sharp objects?”

Because he feels like it, and because he has always been a bit melodramatic, Seunghyub flops backward, gone limp. The mattress squeaks in protest. “A vacuum is not a sharp object.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, sure, but your very favorite dongsaeng needs ice cream, Hyubbie-hyub,” says Jaehyun, because he is actually the worst, he was the worst maknae ever, a disgrace to all who knew him but _especially_ his hyungs. Jaehyun is also, as he speaks, aggressively herding Seunghyub onto his feet and towards the door without a moment’s hesitation.

For what it’s worth, Seunghyub does _try_ to put up a resistance, side-stepping (too slowly) and planting his feet (without enough force to break Jaehyun’s momentum). So, yes, judging by the end result, it isn’t worth too much. “I don’t really want to go anywhere.”

“You’d leave me to die of starvation?” Jaehyun demands, loudly, while hip-checking Seunghyub out into the hall. “My weary bones, my _weary, withered bones_ , all crumbled to DUST, because no one cared enough to feed me while I lived!”

He is now wailing at full volume down the hallway, grinning ear to ear, and Seunghub shoves his feet into the first pair of shoes he can find just to get Jaehyun out the door that much faster.

“ _Behold the sun!”_ Jaehyun bellows up at the sky. His arms are outspread, like a maniacal conductor about to demand the clouds shout along with him, and Seunghyub is inconveniently reminded that this idiot is one of his favorite people in the entire world.

“Jaehyun-ah,” he sighs, more a plea for mercy than a threat.

“C’mon,” Jaehyun says, slapping his hands onto Seunghyub’s shoulders. “Ice cream.”

For a while Seunghyub is walking more on autopilot than anything, placing one foot stubbornly in front of the other, because for years it has been sternly impressed upon him: problems get left in the dorm. When you’re out in the world, you are part of FNC, and the label does not need your personal issues or your stupid broken heart. So because he is a professional, and has always been a good actor, Seunghyub goes out in public looking casual, unruffled.

“We could go someplace nicer,” he says when they reach the Baskin-Robbins.

Jaehyun nods solemnly, an acknowledgment of Seunghyub’s notorious willingness to spoil the younger members, but does not appeared swayed in the slightest. “And yet we will go here. Because your boy’s a basic bitch.” 

After a brief, quietly giggling shove-fight on the sidewalk, they go inside and join the line.

Despite the near-continuous strain of pretending to be fine, things could definitely be worse. It’s good to be out of the house, and to have a cone of the most densely chocolate-packed ice cream flavor he could find, the name of which Seunghyub did not bother to learn. He just jabbed his finger at it and asked for it to please be placed in the largest available waffle cone; there was a friendly sort of sympathy in the smile he got from the girl behind the counter.

“I’m proud of us, hyung,” Jaehyun says when they’ve found a table for themselves and their unreasonably large heaps of ice cream. The bowl in front of Jaehyun looks like it might double as a boat in times of emergency. “Just two growing boys, here to get fucked up on dairy.”

Seunghyub grimaces. “God. The last thing I ate was onion chips.”

“Nice.”

“Not nice,” he corrects flatly, without hope. “There is no way this goes well.”

“To regret!” says Jaehyun, exuberantly tapping a spoonful of something light purple against Seunghyub’s ice cream, as if they’re drinking. It might be better if they were drinking.

But this is the mistake they’ve committed to, so Seunghyub starts to eat. It goes quite well, for all of ten seconds. Then he bites down on what is either a chunk of softened cookie or very frozen brownie, and nearly spits onto the table when he realizes what it’s filled with. Mint.

( _“What, like toothpaste?”_ )

(The cold tingle of it on his tongue, as he licked and licked and Hweseung fell apart.)

Through some miracle, Seunghyub does swallow, but feels sick immediately after. God, it’s in his throat, like the flavor coated the roof of his mouth while he— this is a fucking _disaster_ , he needs water, he needs to wake up in a world where he did not fuck the boy of his dreams.

He’s never going to be able to brush his teeth again. They’ll all fall out and people will ask why Seunghyub is toothless but he will say nothing, because the truth involves being so ready to eat out his friend’s ass that all caution was thrown to the wind, resulting in this, his tragic irreversible aversion to mint. That’s really not a story for the grandkids. Of which, obviously, he will have none, due to his heartbreak, general ennui, and toothlessness.

Jaehyun glances up, takes in Seunghyub’s expression, and immediately removes the ice cream cone from his fingers. “All right, none of that. Just a second.”

It takes him no time at all to find a middle-aged couple interested in the abandoned chocolate behemoth, because Jaehyun is the kind of person who just really _would_ love to go around handing out perfectly good free ice cream to strangers, and that sort of thing shines through.

When he sits back down, he rotates the overflowing cup of mismatched ice cream scoops. “Take the one closest, it’s pistachio and I promise you like it. You just always forget.”

“It’s very—”

“— _very green_ ,” Jaehyun finishes for him. “Yes cupcake, I know. Fuckin’ eat it.”

Seunghyub does, in fact, like pistachio ice cream, a fact he recalls perfectly just as soon as he puts some into his mouth. He also sneaks tiny slivers of butter pecan and coconut while Jaehyun makes passionate love to the flavor of the month, lavender earl grey.

The afternoon sunlight on his cheekbones renders Jaehyun ethereal, his mouth a more striking red, light brown hair glinting with flecks of gold. He turns toward the warmth of the sun and sighs, his features soft and pensive, absently working his lips and tongue around the blob of ice cream on his spoon, and Seunghyub has fun watching other patrons stare and whisper and point him out to their friends. He has, occasionally, theorized that if Jaehyun went through life always looking like _that_ , nobody on earth would ever get a damn thing done.

But as always, the moment passes, and Jaehyun opens his eyes looking more like a normal boy with mischief on his mind. “Okay, so. You and Hweseung, last night.”

Seunghyub drops his plastic spoon, tries to grab it, flips it into his own face, yelps and lets it clatter onto the table. What spoon? Who cares? It can sit there and drip ice cream while his heart forgets to beat. “ _What_ ,” he demands in a low, terrified hiss. “How do you— who—”

“Who told me?” Jaehyun’s eyebrows are approaching their fabled ninety-degree angle.

“ _Yes_. I mean, I guess it must have been him, right? What did he say? Was it bad?”

“Uh, no, Hweseung didn’t say a word to me.”

Confused and dumbstruck, Seunghyub only stares. Finally Jaehyun sighs and clenches his hands into little _why-are-you-making-me-do-this fists_ , which he then waves in the air.

“Okay! Hm. Yes. I don’t quite know how to break this news? But taping paper onto every pane of glass in your stupid door did not actually soundproof it. Like, at all.” 

“Oh god.” Seunghyub folds his arms on the table and buries his face, like a violently blushing ostrich. Surely if there is any mercy in this world, he will die here today without ever making eye contact with another human being. And preferably _soon_ , because now Seunghyub is thinking about last night, when he actually and truly felt willing to die while sucking Hweseung’s dick and who the hell even _thinks_ shit like that? Nobody sane. No one with a single functioning brain cell, no matter how soft the hot damp skin of Hweseung’s thighs might’ve been.

Excellent. Now he’s both mortified and kind of turned on.

“If it’s any consolation, based on the horrible things I heard and can never forget, you’re pretty great in bed. You are more than welcome to dick me down anytime, hyung.”

“Thank you _so_ much,” Seunghyub says into his arms.

“Hey, I don’t offer this lightly!” Jaehyun swats his shoulder back-handed. “My ass is a prize. A trophy, even. Something a big game hunter might mount on his wall.”

Seunghyub sighs and, half-reluctantly, knowing full well he’s being baited into this, lifts his head enough to rest his chin on his forearms and look at Jaehyun. The sun really is very bright today.

“A wall?” he asks dryly. “You make it sound like I could mount your ass anywhere.”

“AYYYY,” Jaehyun yells in delight and laughs with his entire body, infectious.

 

\--

 

They walk for a while after, talking and soaking up sun and occasionally groaning as the full weight of their mistakes begins to make itself known—‘ _fucked up on dairy_ ’ indeed, Seunghyub thinks after a particularly violent gurgle from his stomach, but it turns out that he does, in fact, love pistachio ice cream, so it’s hard to regret that one instance of listening to Jaehyun. Not when there’s so many other things to regret from the last twenty-four hours of his life.

There’s a little park nearby, where Jaehyun befriends not one but two babies in strollers, and Seunghyub waits ’til the second one has rolled away before asking, “What should I do?”

Jaehyun makes a squinty, scrunched-up face into the bright afternoon sunlight. “I hope you aren’t asking me for advice on how to fuck. Because I wish you guys the best, but frankly, neither of you are ready for my advanced and freaky bedroom moves.”

Honestly, this fucking kid. Despite nearly being doubled over laughing, Seunghyub successfully rams his body into Jaehyun’s side as they walk, sending both of them staggering off the sidewalk. “Thank you so much, but no,” he says firmly, slapping away Jaehyun’s hands as combat moves from shoving to tickling. “Stop it! _No not the ribs!_ I am asking a serious question.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Jaehyun says, and tackles him down onto the grass.

It’s a little too close to making a scene, and both of them know it. After the initial tumble they manage to sit like normal people, or a rough approximation of how normal people might look on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and Jaehyun busies his hands with weaving little grass bracelets.

“So?” Seunghyub asks quietly, when Jaehyun has taken his left hand, squinting in concentration, and fastened the first bracelet around his wrist.

Above them, the sun is bright and hot enough that Seunghyub’s shirt is sticking slightly to his back, and the nearby traffic loud enough that he almost doesn’t hear Jaehyun sigh. “What do you do about Hweseung, yeah? You should’ve gone to Kwangjin for his awkward dad advice, or greasy pickup lines. Honestly, I don’t fucking know. You still wanna settle down and marry him and have cute little SeungSeung babies and die holding hands, right?”

And it _sounds_ dismissive and condescending, sure, but Seunghyub has no room to correct it or complain because, horribly enough, all of these suggestions are based on things Seunghyub actually _said_ within the first few weeks of meeting Hweseung. When he falls, he falls hard.

“Yeah,” he says wretchedly. “That’s about right.”

“You’re both disgusting,” Jaehyun informs him, though he ruffles Seunghyub’s hair to soften the criticism somewhat. “But in that case, I guess you should give Hweseungie a little more time to think. It’s all new for both of you, right? Maybe he wants the same things.”

Seunghyub swallows and tears up bits of grass, blade by blade. “I don’t think he does.”

“Hyung.” That pitying tone is so much worse than insults. “No offense, but it might’ve been… a lot, for him. Hooking up with the leader of the group, who also wants to love and honor and cherish his ass until death or dismemberment, in sickness and in swag, for better or—”

“Fuck, Jaehyun, if I give him some time, will you stop?”

“I’ll consider it,” Jaehyun says primly, before tying a careful knot with two fingers and placing his third and largest circlet of braided greenery on Seunghyub’s head like a crown. “Princess!”

“There are days when I hate our friendship.”

“Prettiest princess!” Jaehyun announces more loudly, beaming, effervescent. He hops to his feet, reaches down to haul Seunghyub off the grass, and together they head back to the dorms.

 

 


End file.
